Ishant Sharma: Slumdog Million-Hair

Puppies dying. Babies wailing inconsolably for no apparent reason. The Rupee plummeting. Cyclone Phailin. Disease. Pestilence. Mickey Virus. Miley Cyrus…..just a list of things that occur when Ishant Sharma’s name and mane both make an appearance on the team sheet. It has gotten to the point where I hear his name and proceed to hurl utensils around the house, abuse my prospective in-laws & consider prison sentences. Just typing his name out makes me want to slaughter the parents of cute animals.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that he has set out to wilfully widen the hole in the ozone layer beyond repair with every over that he bowls. No sir, all I’m saying is that he is singularly responsible for almost every tragic thing that’s happening in the world, including the Eurozone crisis. That is the bitter truth. Roland Emmerich even made a movie about it. No wonder the universe implodes everytime he fails.

Many things have been said and written about Ishant before and after THAT over, and the words “reliable death bowler” were certainly not amongst them. At least, not unless preceded by the words “no one’s idea of a”. A tearaway fast bowler in the sense that spectators wanted to tear their eyeballs out of their sockets whilst he was in the middle of that spell, he has helped explain the “liability” in “unreliability”. Scientists have often speculated that the reason he sports the mullet is because he hides a squirrel in it that instructs him what ball to deliver and conveys the information through coded squeaks.

Sample this: Squeak 1 – A toe-crushing, earth shattering yorker? No. Squeak 2 – A wide one just within the tram lines and around the corridor of uncertainty? No. Squeak 3 – Slowish, short-pitched, eminently hittable lollipop? Yes, thank you very much.

Time to get a new squirrel or lose the mullet, perhaps?

I have suffered flashbacks of that over ever since; the deep scars inflicted upon my psyche have affected my relationships with women, and I have not quite been able to see the sunny side of life again. Ishant can sure thank his lucky stars he does not play for the Mongolian cricket team and that Genghis Khan didn’t live long enough to see him play, else he would have been sitting on one end of a seesaw after the match, bound and gagged, waiting to be tried as a witch.

Just for how long do we have to deal with his continued meltdowns as his strike rate freefalls below socially, politically and economically acceptable levels? Even his Test strike rate has begun to threaten to escape into the 70s – a hallowed pedestal reserved for the likes of skull-shuddering world-beaters such as Collingwood and Adam Hollioake. Ishant’s career neatly stacks up into three phases – decent (44 wickets at 32 in his first 15 Tests), disappointing (43 at 40 from his next 15), and disastrous (57 at 42 in 20 Tests since then); enough Ds there to give Danny Morrison an almighty orgasm. Quite clearly, the three Fs (fitness, form and focus) have been reluctant companions on his journey so far.

Like the sovereign debt in the Eurozone, water in the Koramangala area of Bangalore, and sporting spirit in Australian cricket, Team India has always had a fast bowling crisis, beset with chocolate-boy 125-135 kph employees of the hospitality industry. It was then that Ishant arrived as he did – like a breath of fresh hair(?), the interval in an Ashutosh Gowariker movie, or a tandoori chicken in a Jain wedding – hurling thunderbolts consistently upwards of 140 kph and laying waste to the egos of the famed Australian batting behemoths. That spell to Ponting has now been consigned to cricketing folklore. Sadly, the Border-Gavaskar series in India (2008) and the West Indies tour in 2010 notwithstanding, there have been more false dawns in his career than there have been through the window of an insomniac who lives next to a lighthouse.

Even the selectors, the human beings who are there to protect the Indian team from people like him, have given him a rope that has seemingly no end. Picking him blindly, not playing others in squads to put pressure on him, not saying, “Perform or you are out”, are baffling to say the least, Mr. Patil. Or, if you have a quota for Sharmas, why not try Mohit?

Let’s just pray for the sake of global well-being that the selection committee bites the bullet, lest tsunamis or alien invasions eventuate. Or perhaps even worse, Vinay Kumar.

Disclaimer: No mothers and fathers of cute animals were harmed during the making of this article.